Saturday, December 1, 2012

The Khmer Rouge Trial in November 2012

By Albeiro RodasDec 01, 2012
The first visit of a head of government to the Court and the first
hearing over the Khmer Krom genocide investigation were the main events
this month to the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia
(ECCC) for the prosecution of top surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge
regime (1975 – 1979.) The Prime Minister of New Zealand, John Key,
joined US President Barack Obama, Australian Primer Minister Julia
Gillard and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao during the ASEAN summit, then the
premier paid a visit to the Court and announced a new pledge of NZ$
200,000 (US $ 164,220.)

New Zealand has been one of the sponsors of the ECCC since 2006 contributing so far with NZ$ 1 million (US $ 821,100.) ‘New Zealand will continue to help the tribunal complete its work prosecuting the senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge, said the Premier, who met Acting Director Tony Kranh and his fellow citizen Judge Silvia Cartwright. She
is undertaking a very challenging process. We are trying to physically
demonstrate our support for her and the job in hand. It’s important that
those that committed war crimes are held to account,’ he said to Stuff.co.nz.

The Court received also in November visits from Swedish Development
Aid officials, the U.S. Holocaust Museum, and a German delegation, which
announced a new pledge of US $1.2 million to the ECCC.

Khmer Krom victims in Court
The process to demonstrate that the Khmer Rouge regime persecuted the Khmer Krom ethnic has been troublesome. In late 2011 the request for supplementary investigations
regarding Genocide of the Khmer Krom and the Vietnamese ethnic groups
in Cambodia during the time of the Democratic Kampuchea was given,
especially in mass executions in Bakan District – Pursat Province – and
Takeo along the borders. There is not formal indictment to responsible
of these crimes in what is known as case 004 so far, though there is the
mention of suspects, which names remain confidential as much as the
investigation goes its way.
The ECCC´s Defense Support Section assigned a foreign lawyer to
represent a suspect in case 004, Dutch criminal defense lawyer Göran
Sluiter.

Khmer Krom refers to the Khmer ethnic population living or coming
from the Mekong Delta, today the southern part of Vietnam in what is
referred by Cambodians as Kampuchea Krom (Lower Cambodia or Lower
Kingdom), because it was a Cambodian territory transferred by the French
colony to Vietnam. Although Khmer Krom people speak Khmer and follow
Therevada Buddhism as other Cambodians, those who were settled in the
country during the regimen were seen as Vietnamese spies, then persecuted, tortured and executed.

Other events
The Court reported also the swearing-in of a new Co-Investigating
Judge Mark Harmon from US, following the resignation of Judge Siegfried
Blunk in October 2011 and his reserve Judge Laurent Kasper-Ansermet in
May 2012. Judge Harmon is a veteran at the International Criminal
Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia for the past 17 years and he will
work with cases 003 and 004 with his Cambodian counterpart, Judge You
Bunleng.

The ECCC Victims Support Section leads this year the 4th Regional
Forum for civil parties in case 002 to inform those who cannot attend
the hearings in Phnom Penh over the current process of the Court, to
facilitate discussion between lawyers and civil parties and to
facilitate the exercise of their rights. On 16 November the Forum met in
Sihanoukville with 200 out of 3,864 civil parties, which names remained
confidential for security reasons. They came from the coastal provinces
of Cambodia and Kampong Speu.